by Lauren Sabel
“And do what?” I ask.
Indigo shrugs. “Talk.” He grabs the manila envelope from the table and shuts the door.
You know when people tell you to talk, and suddenly nothing seems important enough to say? There’s a long silence, and I almost forget that we were talking before Indigo entered with the sandwiches. I turn over the paper and start doodling again. Jasper blows into his paper bag so that it looks like a balloon, then smashes it between both hands. It explodes with a loud POP. Could he be any more of a boy?
“Hey, Calliope. What are you thinking about?” Jasper suddenly says. It strikes me that maybe the reason I let Jasper call me my real name is because he’s the only person that knows both sides of me. As if I’m usually two people, and I can finally just be one.
“Seriously. What are you thinking about?” Jasper sings in a loud, off-key voice.
“Um . . . about whether I made a wrong turn and this is actually the tryouts for glee club?”
“Very funny,” he says. He stands up and leans against the wall near me. “So . . . when was your first time?”
In any other reality, like the one Charlie and my mom inhabit, I’d be blushing and crossing my legs. But in this one, the one Jasper and I live in, he is just asking when I first started viewing. Not that it’s any less personal. But I like how he says it so naturally, as if it’s almost normal.
I draw a hangman’s noose on a piece of blank paper. “If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t sing again.”
Jasper crosses his heart. “Promise made,” he says, and then he balls the paper bag up and tosses it in the trash. “No more singing.”
“When I was a little kid,” I say, cringing at the memory, “I imagined that our cat had been torn to pieces by our neighbor’s dog. I saw it right before I fell asleep, so I thought it was a dream.” I draw four lines below the noose and then five more.
“But then I found the dead cat, and it was so awful. Its head was torn right off its body.” I write HANGMAN below the nine lines. “I never wanted to see anything so awful again, so I learned to block it all out. . . . But then Indigo found me.”
“And?”
“And he taught me that this curse could be a gift,” I say. “I could do something really meaningful with my life. Help people. And make my migraines go away, all at the same time.”
“Indigo’s good like that,” Jasper says, and then adds, “Two words.”
I nod.
“A,” Jasper says, and I shake my head. “B.”
“You’re terrible at this.” I draw the head and neck attached to the noose. “Pick three letters.”
“S, T, U.”
I write down T _ _ S SU_ _ S
“This sucks,” he says.
“Getting better,” I say, filling in the rest of the phrase.
“It wouldn’t suck so much if you didn’t trash your roast beef.” Jasper grabs my chips off the table and throws them at me. I catch the bag of chips with one hand and chuck one of the plastic utensils back at him with the other. “Who eats sandwiches with a fork?” he asks.
“You mean a spork,” I point out.
“Behold the great plastic bender,” Jasper says. He holds his spork between his thumb and index finger, and slowly bends it.
“More like the great bullshitter,” I say, putting my plastic spork on the table. “No one can bend plastic.”
“True,” Jasper says, “but they didn’t give us real sporks.”
I pick my spork up and snap it in half. “There, spork bending achieved.”
Jasper studies me a moment. “You can bend metal, can’t you?”
I shake my head. “It just happened once, and I didn’t know what I was doing, or how I did it.”
“But you can see electromagnetic radiation, like dirty bombs and stuff?” he asks.
I nod. “But not just weapons. Lots of things have radiation in them. There’s radiation in all kinds of metals, used to build all sorts of things, like, um, computers and TVs, and cell phones too.” I take my phone out of my pocket and put it on the table. “But some people say these waves cause brain tumors and other health problems.”
Jasper pulls his phone out of his pocket too, and places it beside mine. “I’m not scared,” he says.
“You don’t seem scared of anything.”
Jasper shrugs. “When you live in foster homes, you get used to being scared. It’s not that I don’t get scared anymore; it’s that I know how to walk right into it. Refuse to be afraid.”
Refuse to be afraid. If my mom would let me have a tattoo, I’d have that tattooed on my wrist. “When was your first?” I ask him.
“When I was a kid, I was on my own a lot,” he says. “But even when I was alone, I felt like there was something bigger out there. Like I was in the presence of something larger. And one day I had a vision.” He grabs a piece of paper and pulls it toward him. “It just appeared in front of me, like a mirage. At first I thought I was imagining it, but I could feel it and touch it. Like it was already real. I was standing on this bare piece of land, and I suddenly saw a settlement, for people like us.”
“People like us?”
“Psychics. Fortune-tellers, people with the powers of sight. I knew I had to build it, and someday I will.” He reaches for the pen in my hand, but his fingers bypass the pen and skim my wrist. “Maybe you’ll help me?”
His fingers are now touching the soft skin around my wrist. Everything in me gets loose and tense at once, and a hot liquid rolls around my stomach.
Jasper knows me, I realize. The deep, secretive part of me. The whole me. And Charlie never will.
Indigo knocks on the door and opens it at the same time. “Now was that so painful?” he asks.
“No,” Jasper says, quickly pulling his hand away from my wrist.
“Yes,” I say, and put my hands in my lap.
Indigo hands Jasper the envelope for our next session. “Don’t get used to viewing more than once a day, guys. This is a special circumstance.”
We both nod, and Indigo shuts the door.
Jasper and I switch places again, and I lie back on the cozy couch cushions. “I wonder if it’s the same envelope?” I ask.
“We’ll find out,” Jasper says.
I close my eyes and picture what’s inside the envelope. My muscles slowly relax, and I feel that twitch in my legs that I sometimes feel when I am falling asleep, and then I’m in the woman’s body again.
It’s less of a shock this time, now that I know what to expect. Her skin is heavy, like a wet overcoat, but not uncomfortable.
“Ask her what the targets are,” Jasper says over my vision.
“What are the lasers’ targets?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer. At the same time, I feel the cold gun in her hand again. I look down at the gun, and then I follow it to where it is pointing. A few feet away, a man is backed up against the computer screens, his hands held up in surrender. His sweating face is almost as red as his beard and his circular glasses magnify his terrified eyes like the end of two microscopes.
“What are the targets?” I yell into the woman’s mind.
Bang! I feel the gun jerk in my hand, and the man slumps to the ground. Before I can figure out what happened, the man is lying on the floor, blood dripping out of a hole in his black sweater. Then the legs beneath me collapse, like someone hit the woman behind the knees.
As we fall face-first to the concrete floor, I hear footsteps behind me, and they sound so close that I should be able to reach out and grab the other person’s ankles and yank them to the ground. But no, this is someone else’s space, someone else’s reality. It’s not really happening to me, I remind myself. I’m seeing out of another person’s eyes. But whose? That’s the last thing I think before the woman’s face hits the concrete floor, and everything goes black.
I jolt out of my vision. Across from me, Jasper is leaning forward in his chair, a concerned look on his face. “It’s been over three hours,” he says. “What happened?”
“I think I’m gonna stay in my own mind for a while.” I push the paper across the table to him. As I point at my drawing of the man being shot, I remember the news report I saw on my neighbor’s TV about the hacker who broke into NASA to name a star after his mother. He had a red beard too, and those large circular glasses. “It was that hacker,” I tell Jasper, “You know? Star guy?” Before I can stop myself, I start trembling. “I’ve seen people killed before, but I guess I’ve never recognized the person. It makes me feel like I know him or something. It just . . . makes it real.”
Jasper puts the envelope on the table and comes over to sit beside me on the couch. “Are you sure?”
I nod. Jasper puts one arm around me, and I let go of myself enough to lean my head against his shoulder. We’re probably breaking some rules, but it feels so good not to be alone in this, to talk to someone my age who really understands.
“What can I do?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” I shake my head, and my lips graze his collarbone, and then he’s kissing me.
Jasper’s kiss is nothing like Charlie’s. It’s not drenched in sweetness, in the taste of forever. It’s passionate, a fire raging through my belly sort of passion, and I feel like I’m flying through the sky, my arms wrapped around him. Soon his hands are in my hair, and my body is pressed against his until we can’t get any closer, and I find I wouldn’t be able to pull away even if I wanted to—and I know I should want to, but in this moment, the truth is, I don’t. His skin is so warm against mine, and I feel my body trembling in his strong grasp. I’m not alone anymore.
Then I see my phone on the table, still searching for a connection. The time is blinking on the screen: 5:45 p.m.
Charlie. His opening.
Dread floods into me with such force it makes me cringe. I drop my arms from around Jasper, my cheeks bursting with shame, and he goes still beside me.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
I can barely hear him. My thoughts are roaring against my ears. I can’t miss Charlie’s show. I promised I’d be there.
I dash out of the viewing room and look wildly around the concrete bunker until I spot Indigo in the corner, near Pat and Martina’s viewing room. I race over to him. “Can I leave?” I ask. “I have somewhere I need to be.”
“Calm down,” Indigo says gently, placing his hand on my shoulder. “You know your responsibilities here, Callie. You can’t just leave.”
“But this is an emergency!”
Indigo studies my face for what seems like hours, and then he glances down at my trembling hands. “Okay,” he finally says. “You’ve probably overtaxed your mind by now anyway. But Jasper’s going to have to take you; I can’t have Anthony gone that long. I’ll pick you up at eight sharp tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks,” I call over my shoulder as I dash back into the viewing room. Jasper is now standing up beside the chair, his motorcycle helmet swinging from his hand.
“Can you drop me off at an art gallery in the city?” I ask.
Jasper shrugs. “If Indigo’s okay with it.”
“He is,” I say, pulling on Jasper’s hand. “Come on. Hurry up.”
We race across the bunker to where Anthony is waiting for us. He leads us down the underground garage to an ugly minivan with blackened windows. Jasper and I get into the backseat and Anthony blindfolds both of us. “I’ll drop you off at Jasper’s bike,” he says.
After a few minutes of riding in tense silence, the minivan stops, and Anthony opens the back door. He unties my blindfold and I blink into the early evening sun. I untie Jasper’s blindfold, and we climb out of the minivan onto the steep hillside. Leaning against a wall of rock is Jasper’s motorcycle.
“No public transportation for us this time,” Jasper says.
“As if there’s any out here,” I respond.
As far as I can tell, we’re somewhere in Mill Valley, the very beautiful and very wealthy suburb across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. It’s also very rural, which I usually think is a welcome change from the craziness of the city. But not now.
“Think you can make it from here?” Anthony asks.
Jasper nods, so Anthony climbs back into the minivan and drives away. Jasper quickly pulls the motorcycle upright and secures the helmet on my head.
“I’ll take the shortcut,” he says, jumping onto his bike and revving the engine. “All private land so it takes half as long.”
“Thanks.” I climb on behind Jasper and wrap my arms around him.
We speed through Mill Valley, the green hills rising on both sides of us. Charlie’s show must be starting now. I missed meeting him at our favorite noodle place, but as long as I’m at the show, it surely won’t matter, will it?
We crest down the hill, and as the cool wind blows against my sweating skin, I suddenly hear a clunking sound. The bike jerks beneath us.
“What is that?” I ask, as Jasper slowly rolls to a stop on the side of a hill.
“I don’t know,” Jasper says. He turns the key several times, but it won’t start. “I think we’re out of gas.”
My stomach plummets down the hill. “Please be kidding.”
Jasper shakes his head. “I’ve reminded myself to fill up like fifty times. These things can go forever.”
I stare past Jasper at the tiny view of the city. High rises climb up the hillsides, and somewhere, among all those buildings, Charlie’s show is starting.
I pull out my phone and press the on button, but the phone is dead. Roaming all those hours at the bunker must have worn out the battery. “Can I use your phone?” I ask Jasper. I try to slow my heartbeat, but its quick pitter-patter in my chest must be loud enough for Jasper to hear.
He digs in his pockets. “I think I left mine at the bunker.”
“What are we going to do?” I ask, my voice rising in hysteria.
“I think we passed a gas station a mile or so back,” Jasper says.
The next four hours are a painful blur. We walk to the gas station, but no one is there, so we have to wait for someone to get back. When they do arrive, I use their phone to call a taxi, but the taxi takes over an hour to get there. And when it does, Jasper insists on using it to go back to his motorcycle and fill it up with gas, which actually is necessary since neither of us has anywhere near enough cash to take a taxi back to the city.
By that time, the show has been over for a couple of hours.
In the city, Jasper’s motorcycle zips through the streets, passing where I was supposed to meet Charlie for lunch. Our noodle shop is closed, the cheap wooden stools turned upside down on the tables, a Chinese sign hanging in the window advertising this week’s rooftop party.
We roar down Fillmore Street, past the cutesy art shops and boutique coffee houses. Jasper flips on his turn signal at the last minute and pulls up to the art gallery with a screech. I hop off the bike before it has fully stopped and rush to the window, hoping against hope that for some reason, Charlie’s still here.
The gallery is empty. I press myself against the huge glass front window and look inside at all of those pictures of me, hanging side by side. Many of them are hanging at a slightly crooked angle, as if they were hung up in a hurry. Maybe because he was waiting for me.
I press my palms against the window, mouthing I’m sorry so Jasper doesn’t hear me crying.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I open the front door a few inches and slip into my dark house as quietly as I can, but it doesn’t help. Mom is waiting in the living room, the white leather couch creased under her slim figure.
“We waited for you at the gallery,” she says. “Why didn’t you answer our calls?”
I’ve never been grounded, or in trouble. My mom has never been the type to stay home and watch me to make sure I’ve eaten my dinner or brushed my teeth or lived out my week-long grounding sentence. And it’s not like she can take TV from me. All the same, the shame creeps in. How could I do that to Charlie? Will he ever forgive me? When I
glance at my mom, she’s looking at me as if she’s barely hiding her disappointment.
“My phone died,” I respond. “Sorry.”
“Where were you tonight?”
I wish again that it wasn’t so dangerous to tell Mom the truth. But if I did, and anyone found out, they could torture her to find out what I know, I remind myself. The thought of Mom being hurt because of me is enough to keep my mouth closed.
“I was so worried about you,” Mom continues. “I called the Bernsteins.”
I swallow the hot stone in my throat. I’ve never actually called the Branch 13 help line Indigo had me give my mom in case she ever had any questions about my “government internship,” and now I’m wishing I had. I don’t even know who answers those calls, and I seriously doubt Indigo would stop running Branch 13 to take house calls. “What did they say?” I ask nervously.
“Mr. Bernstein’s very nice,” she says slowly, tapping her upper lip with her index finger. “But strange.”
“What do you mean by ‘strange’?”
“I asked if you were watching Emma tonight, and at first it was like he didn’t know what I was talking about,” Mom says.
Uh-oh.
“But then I said ‘Callie Sinclair? The girl who nannies for you?’” Mom continues, “and then Mr. Bernstein said he was sorry they had to keep you late babysitting and that you probably hadn’t had a chance to call.”
The knot loosens in my throat. “Sorry,” I say, and I remind myself to find out who takes those calls, and thank them for covering for me.
“Mr. Bernstein said his nephew would bring you home,” Mom says. “Is that the same boy you had lunch with a while ago?”
I nod. “We’ve become friends.”
“I don’t like you being out with a college boy,” Mom says. “Does he know how young you are?”
“He’s seventeen, too,” I say defensively.
“I still don’t like it,” Mom replies.
I drop down onto the couch beside Mom. “It was just a ride home, Mom. It’s not like we were making out or something.” Just kissing while I stood up my boyfriend.
